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Our pick of this week’s art events: 30 May - 5 June

Our pick of this week’s art events: 30 May - 5 June

RA Recommends

By Sam Phillips

Published 30 May 2014

From ‘the Picasso of India’ to Royal Academician Richard Wilson at the Whitstable Biennale.

Alice Channer: Synthetic Fibres

The Approach, London, 29 May–6 July 2014
Figurative art takes a new twist in the multidisciplinary art of Alice Channer. The subject of a new solo show at The Approach, the British artist represents the traces of bodies rather than bodies themselves. The starting point is often clothing, which Channer first draws, casts or captures in some way, then transforms beyond recognition through a range of experiment processes. What remains at the end is an elegant if remote echo of human presence.

M.F. Husain: Master of Modern Indian Painting

V&A, London, 28 May–27 July 2014
‘The Picasso of India’ is the common billing of Pandharpur-born painter M.F. Husain (1915–2011), to reflect both his status in the country’s art history as well as the way he, like the Catalan, combined the modern world with myth in unnaturalistic scenes of figures in flux. A free exhibition of his work at the V&A features late triptychs that concentrate on key aspects of Indian society and history, from domestic life to past ruling dynasties.

Catherine Story

Carl Freedman, London,
until 28 June 2014
Following her presentation in ‘Painting Now: Five Contemporary Artists’ at Tate Britain, Catherine Story shows beguiling new work at Carl Freedman. A graduate from the Royal Academy Schools in 2009, the artist zigzags between painting and sculpture – sometimes her semi-figurative constructions in clay or wood appear to be reincarnated in paint and vice-versa, always nodding to a history of visual art, whether the blocky creations of Cubism or cinema’s own version of representing three dimensions in two.

Catherine Story,Astoria,2014.

Wood, acrylic. 143 x 96 x 50 cm.

Whitstable Biennale

Whitstable, 31 May–15 June 2014
Whitstable’s identity as an artsy enclave has been boosted since 2006 by its own biennale. The programme nobly blends different disciplines and exposes emerging artists alongside those more established, such as the Academician sculptor Richard Wilson(/artist/117), who works this year with duo Zatorski + Zatorski on a summer solstice spectacular – a concert-cum-live art piece, held at sea

Richard Wilson / Zatorski + Zatorski

Doug Southall/ The Cultureship

Richard Deacon and Bill Woodrow: On the Rocks. Again.

New Art Centre, Roche Court, Wiltshire, 31 May–6 July 2014
Following the recent Academy’s retrospective of Bill Woodrow RA and Tate Britain’s solo show of Richard Deacon RA, the two artists resume their collaborative practice with an exhibition at Wiltshire’s New Art Centre. For those who known their individual practices, it is especially fascinating to see on how their different approaches to symbolism and substance come together. Despite the wide arrange of materials for which both artists are known, Woodrow and Deacon have produced a new series solely in glass for the show.

Installation view of Richard Deacon and Bill Woodrow: On the Rocks. Again.

Mutations

Tiwani Contemporary, London,
30 May–5 July 2014
And a colleague of mine has recommended I visit Tiwani Contemporary, a gallery that specialises in contemporary art from Africa, the African diaspora and other Southern Hemisphere countries. Their new group show might be the time to go, as four artists – with their roots in Nigeria, Bolivia, Jamaica and Brazil – present four very different approaches to drawing, all linked by ideas around mutation.

Piccadilly site

Burlington Gardens site

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